Orleans Levee Board - History

History

The Orleans Levee District was created by the Louisiana legislature in 1890 for the purpose of protecting the city of New Orleans from floods. At the time, communities along the Mississippi River were largely in charge of creating their own levees to protect themselves, as no unified levee system existed. Most neighboring parishes had (and some still have) similar parochial levee boards.

In 1924, the state legislature authorized the levee district's Board of Commissioners ("the Levee Board") to acquire 33,000 acres (130 km²) of land on the east bank of the Mississippi River about 50 miles (80 km) south of New Orleans in order to build the Bohemia Spillway between the River and the Gulf of Mexico. (1924 La. Acts 99). Approximately half of this land was public property transferred from the state; the other half was either expropriated or purchased under threat of expropriation from private owners according to a legal finding. (1928 La. Acts 246; 1942 La. Acts 311).

In the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the United States Congress gave the United States Army Corps of Engineers supervision and control of design and construction of flood control throughout the Mississippi Valley. Local levee boards remained, however, in charge of day-to-day inspection and maintenance of the levee systems in their areas.

In the 1934 New Orleans Lakefront Airport opened on land dredged from Lake Pontchartrain by the Levee Board, part of a larger "lakefill" land reclamation project initiated to construct a super levee to protect the northern perimeter of New Orleans. The airport was originally named "Shushan Airport" after Orleans Levee Board president Abraham Lazar Shushan; it was renamed "New Orleans Airport" after Shushan's indictment for corrupution in the Louisiana Scandals of the late 1930s.

In the wake of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Congress directed the United States Army Corps of Engineers to design and construct a network of levees and floodwalls for Greater New Orleans sufficient to withstand a direct hit by a moderately strong hurricane, approximating Category 3 on the modern Saffir-Simpson scale.

A 2002 lawsuit detailed the Orleans Levee Board's then-considerable independent financial means.

From the Levee Board's Legal Statement at trial:

"With regard to the more general question of the levee district's budget, the Orleans Levee District receives very little funding from the state. The levee district generates its own revenues from the Lakefront Airport, a casino, leases of property, fees from boatslips and marinas, and taxes. The district also receives income from various investment accounts currently worth $57 million. The levee board does not dispute these facts. At oral argument, counsel for the levee board pointed out that the district receives some state funds, even though they are usually in the form of capital outlays dedicated to specific projects. Because the state funds are already earmarked for other purposes, the state monies cannot be used to pay a judgment against the levee district. See Hudson, 174 F.3d at 688-89."